60 Queen Anne’s Lace
Queen Anne’s Lace
It was only August, but you could feel fall in the air.
The days were shorter, the angle of the light hitting the water no longer quite so brilliant or strong.
While riding my bike to the club now, for my daily workout on the court or the interludes I carved out for myself to hit balls against the backboard, I’d see beautiful lacy flowers in bloom along the sides of the road.
City girl that I was, I didn’t know the names of flowers, but Prudence told me: Queen Anne’s lace.
When they came into bloom, you knew summer was drawing to a close.
Given her past mental health issues, you might have thought that Regina’s reaction to my report on Forrest and Brenda’s tryst on the island would have sent her to bed for a week. This didn’t happen. But a change came over Regina after my disclosure to her—incomplete as it had been.
Regina became a woman on fire. Where, for most of the summer, she’d lingered in bed until ten in the morning or later, she seemed to have acquired a new and boundless, though manic, energy.
Her rage seemed to provide her with a reason for getting up every morning.
Now she was out of bed even before I was, sometimes.
Up until now—even after she’d learned about the affair, and after she’d come to understand it was more serious than Forrest’s previous affairs—Regina had still maintained a certain level of affection for Forrest. Anyone could see he had this effect on her.
Now, with this latest discovery, all that disappeared.
Where her husband was concerned, her heart had turned to stone.
Worse than that: Acid ran through her veins.
Regina’s awareness of Forrest and Brenda’s affair, and her belief in its seriousness, seemed to energize her.
The old inertia vanished, along with her general lack of attention and fuzziness—replaced by laser focus.
I could see it in her eyes. The way she looked at me now suggested an intensity and concentration I’d never witnessed in her before, centered on her hatred for the man she believed to be planning to commit murder—her murder.
She didn’t say much about the changes in her state of mind and the revelation that had brought this about. I just watched her as she chewed on it, as if she had a rancid piece of meat in her mouth.
In the past, Regina could often be observed drifting through the rooms of the house without any particular destination or goal: Typewriter .
. . chaise lounge . . . nap . . . pills .
. . knitting . . . tea, interspersed with brief interactions between herself and the children that seldom lasted more than a minute or two.
At her suggestion that they play a game, Jilly and Hayward would lay out the Monopoly board or deal a hand of cards, but before the game got underway, she’d get up from the table and disappear, saying she was tired, or possibly not saying anything.
For the worst possible reason, Regina seemed to be getting her act together now.
For the first time since I’d known her, she made an appointment at a salon to get her hair done.
She put on well-cut blue jeans and the kind of shirt other mothers wore down at the club.
She suggested to Jilly that they invite a girl from the club for a playdate.
Except for the weird glow in her eyes, like a rabid wolf—or what I imagined a rabid wolf’s eyes might look like—she could pass as a normal person.
Forrest still brought her whatever pills she’d been taking, but though she made no indication of this to him, I noted that she seldom took any of them. She placed the pills in a little glass jar she kept in a drawer of her makeup table.
She was paying more attention to her hair lately, and wearing clothes other than caftans.
She still looked frail, but beautiful. One day she even asked Prudence a question: “Do you have any children?” Prudence had worked for the Emersons for many years at this point.
Until now, Regina had never gotten around to inquiring.
Prudence did, actually. Four of them.